Maurice's selected thoughts.

Several weeks ago I noticed that someone had written the phrase “Nobody likes a quitter.” on a white board in my office. I’ve been pondering this for quite some time now, and I have a few thoughts.

It seems like at least a few people would in fact like quitters. For example, the runner up in a contest comes to mind. Wouldn’t it be nice if just before winning the person in first place decided they couldn’t hack it anymore?

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The Prometheus Software, LLC website is now up. Products are available. By products I mean just the one screencast on creating a Hello World application in C#. This is the first time I’ve created a screencast of this quality, it took about 50 hours or so. I spent maybe one hour recording the raw footage and another 49 figuring out how to put everything together. I threw out several versions before I came up with the workflow that ended in this final product. Now I think I can use this same workflow to produce another episode in much less time, but we’ll see what happens. The file is available now for $1, which covers download costs and PayPal fees plus a little extra for my efforts.

A few months ago a friend of mine IMed me with this crazy idea. As of Oct. 30th he has decided to share with the world, or at least those that get an invite. Check out Nicholas Carr’s thoughts. I’m particularly fond of the comparison to assault rifles. Personally I still think this is an incredible idea, just as I did after that first IM. I think this is going to be huge. I’m very impressed by it, so thanks Dan, Preston, and Marc. Great work and I’m really looking forward to see what is next. Now I just need to brainstorm and figure out some really cool applications, that aren’t too creepy. Check it out for yourself at Mugr.com.

I guess I’ll make some notes here on the on going development of my business website. It’s available at prometheussoftwarellc.com. There isn’t really much up right now but I’m hoping I’ve used enough of the keywords I’d like to target that I can get a decent ranking on Google in a shorter period of time.

Basically for the past few weeks I’ve been looking into shopping cart software. I’ve tried osCommerce and Zen Cart on a test system. So far Zen Cart is way better, but not exactly what I want. Long term I’d like to write something nice in Rails, but right now it is too much additional effort. The name of the game is speed and that means using what is already built even though I don’t care for the design a great deal.

Basically what I’m really looking for is something like WordPress but with a shopping cart built in, and a forum. So if WordPress, Zen Cart, and phpbb mated but were rewritten in Rails I think I’d have the perfect solution. If anyone knows of where I can get this software please let me know.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the process of learning to program. I’m currently teaching an introductory level programming course using C# at ASU. In order to prepare for this course I’ve read quite a few introductory texts using C#, not for myself but in order to find the perfect text for my students. The conclusion is simple. There is no perfect text.

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I first heard about PeepCode sometime last spring. At the time I must admit I was not too keen on Ruby. Times have changed. I discovered for myself why Ruby (particularly Rails) is so cool this past summer. Recently, I actually went out to the PeepCode site and took a look at a few of their samples, then ultimately paid for a few tutorials. These guys do a nice job. This method of presenting tutorials on programming is probably the best I’ve encountered. The only way to learn faster would be to sit next to an expert and peek over their shoulder while they write code. I like this methodology so much that I’m working on using similar techniques in the introductory C# class I’m teaching this semester. Even if you are not interested in Ruby or Rails you should give this a look as it is a nice preview of the future of learning to program.

Not to long ago I wrote here about our trusty mac mini server, well after nearly two years (20 months) of service the old Mac mini has moved on. No it did not die, it is now enjoying a second life as a desktop once again. After a little debate as to whether or not to purchase an Xserve I once again decided to go with a mini as my server (long story short it was the noise factor that tilted the scales the most). The new mini being a dual core box with 2 GB of ram is much faster the the old mini, but serves the same purposes. The old mini is now happily functioning as a desktop again as I have passed it on to my mother. Mom has really taken to iPhoto, and the rest of the iLife suite. Now that digital photos are so easy she keeps wondering when we’ll be adding a grandbaby to the equation.

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